


Mirror Images

by Enfilade



Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One)
Genre: Domestication, Gen, Mind Control, Mind Control Aftermath & Recovery, Non-Sexual Slavery, Slavery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-17
Updated: 2017-05-17
Packaged: 2018-11-01 22:49:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,236
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10931652
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Enfilade/pseuds/Enfilade
Summary: Lyzack is used to being her brother Leozack's shadow.  Now she's found Deathsaurus's mirror image...  Origin story for Esmeral.





	Mirror Images

**Author's Note:**

> On Transgender Lyzack: at this point in time, the Warworld has encountered female Cybertronians, meaning Deathsaurus and his crew understand and accept the existence of a female gender and Lyzack has begun identifying herself in accordance with that female gender
> 
> Demus - the monoformer from MTMTE #45, not to be confused with Damus aka Tarn
> 
> Originally published in the TF FemmeZine.

Mirror Images

_Series setting: IDW G1_

_Time setting: half a million years after Simanzi, prior to Deathsaurus’s theft of the Warworld_

_Place setting: the Outer Rim, on the edge of Cybertronian charted space_

Lyzack typed a string of code into the Warworld’s master computer while she thought about universal constants. Energy could not be created or destroyed, only changed in form; systems always proceeded towards entropy; and her brother and her commander would quarrel with one another until the day they all went offline. Even now, their loud voices echoed through the bridge, interrupting Lyzack’s concentration. 

Lyzack rose to her feet, fists clenched in exasperation. She could _not_ finish the latest updates to the Warworld’s security codes with those two _bickering_. And she never had much time between the final conquest of one world, like the planet they were orbiting right now, and battle stations as they moved on to the next. She didn’t need to ask if the conquest was complete. Deathsaurus and Leozack would not be back already if it was not.

It didn’t matter to Lyzack that she was not a soldier like her brother, or an officer like Deathsaurus. _She_ was the head computer technician on the Warworld, _she_ was responsible for information security, and _both_ Deathsaurus and Leozack knew how important it was to have the Warworld’s computers functioning at optimum capacity. She fully intended to tell them to take their stupid argument somewhere else so she could work…just as soon as she found out what they were arguing about.

She’d gotten used to tuning them out over the years, but always a cold fear in the bottom of her spark made her worry that this time it would be _serious_. She hoped that if their sniping ever boiled over into genuine malice, that she would know in time to stop them.

They were blocking the doorway to the bridge, glaring daggers at one another. Deathsaurus was sporting several impressive injuries, including claw marks gouging his chest and what appeared to be a massive bite at the base of his neck. Lyzack caught her breath, but on closer examination, it didn’t look as though Leozack had inflicted the wounds. Leozack’s mouth, she thought with amusement, was big, but only in the metaphorical sense. 

“Our resources aren’t unlimited,” Leozack growled, rising on his toes to look Deathsaurus straight in the lower optics.

Lyzack and her brother were the products of the same assembly line in a MTO facility, but where Leozack had been designed for combat, Lyzack had been optimized for a support role. None of that had mattered when the Decepticons started cramming half-defrosted sparks into every available bodyshell and dumping them onto the front lines. 

Were they a true branched spark, or merely a split spark? They didn’t know, and feared to guess. Sometimes, in a low mood, Lyzack wondered if Leozack only protected her on the battlefield for fear of losing his own life. But most of the time, she believed that the reason he protected her was the same reason she protected him, using her programming and hacking skills. They contrasted and complimented one another: shadow and light; mirror images. 

They’d seen something in one another—a kinship, or maybe just a sense of familiarity—but something that had given them an attachment that most MTOs weren’t fortunate enough to have, and with it, a reason both to stay alive and to help the other to do the same. And so she stood by Leozack, even if he could be pigheaded and vainglorious and aggressive and more than a little selfish—as he seemed to be behaving right now.

“So we’ll get more,” Deathsaurus snarled back. His wings flared and his talons flexed, as though in preparation for a fight. Indeed, that was typically how the Warworld garnered resources: _planetary renovation specialists_ was a lovely title, but in actual fact, they were more like privateers, sacking and conquering worlds in the name of the Empire, leaving the terraforming work to crews that followed in their wake. “We’re not above a little _resource reallocation_.”

“I doubt that Megatron would approve of this course of action,” Leozack sneered, and Lyzack held her breath. Deathsaurus was increasingly unhappy with Megatron these days and Leozack, of course, knew exactly how to push his leader’s buttons.

“Megatron isn’t _here_ ,” Deathsaurus scowled. “And if he _were_ I suspect his decision would be based on whatever lofty battle plan is in his head this week, as opposed to the _welfare of this crew_.”

“She’s not _part of this crew_ ,” Leozack retorted, and Lyzack felt her wings twitch in apprehension.

“She is if I _say_ she is,” Deathsaurus said, pulling rank, and Lyzack cringed, because she knew how much Leozack hated being reminded that he was Deathsaurus’s subordinate.

Leozack talked constantly about his desire to be in charge. Lyzack wasn’t sure whether Leo thought he would be better liked, or better respected, or more _important_ in some vaguely-defined way, if he were the captain instead of the executive officer. She also wasn’t sure whether Deathsaurus didn’t trust him enough—because there were a number of times, as of late, where Deathsaurus didn’t appear to want to listen to Leozack’s input—or if Deathsaurus trusted him _too much_. She was afraid Leozack had a legitimate grievance, and she was also afraid that Deathsaurus offered him too many opportunities to stab him in the back.

They were _both_ her…her… She didn’t have a word for it. But she felt torn between them nonetheless.

“You’ll adopt _anything_ ,” Leozack snapped, and Lyzack reached the limit of her patience for her brother’s shenanigans.

“Which,” she said sternly, stepping in between the two warriors and glaring at Leozack, “might be the reason he took _us_ in, back when we were fresh off the assembly line.”

Leozack had the good graces to look abashed for all of three seconds before he muttered, “He needed _us_ as much as we needed _him_.”

Lyzack hated to admit that Leozack might have a point. Deathsaurus, for all he was big and cunning and a terror on the battlefield, had still been only one mech in the face of the Autobot army. Lyzack and her brother had been his first allies—his first friends. But Deathsaurus, unlike Leozack, had a knack of making mechs believe in him. The others who’d rallied to Deathsaurus’s side—now five hundred strong—they’d come for _Deathsaurus_. Not to Leozack, and not to her. Not even if Deathsaurus couldn’t have done it without them.

She knew what to say to her brother.

“And together, the _three of us_ founded this unit.” 

Leozack’s jaw dropped open. Lyzack turned her attention to Deathsaurus. “Is there something I can help you with?”

Deathsaurus glanced at Lyzack’s console and smirked. He knew damned well he was interrupting her, she thought, and then he spoke. “As a matter of fact, there is. I hope you can leave your coding for a time?”

Lyzack threw one last regretful look over her shoulder. She really _had_ been looking forward to a quiet day of systems upgrades. But she knew that the reason the Warworld operated to the standard it did was because everyone aboard contributed to the welfare of the whole. Deathsaurus would not be asking her to do something if he didn’t think it was important.

“I can,” she said.

“Good. There’s someone I’d like you to meet.” Deathsaurus beckoned for her to follow him and stepped out of the room.

“Here we go.” Leozack rolled his eyes as he fell into step beside Lyzack. “As if we didn’t already have _enough_ pets _._ ”

Lyzack’s gaze fell to Leozack’s chestplate where his pet, a teal-green lion-mech, rested in slumber. Many of the Warworld’s crew had Chest Animals who acted as weapons and armour as well as companions. Lyzack’s own chest was bare, unadorned. “I don’t,” she murmured, and Leozack glared.

Deathsaurus chuckled. “This one’s a little big for you to wear,” he said, and he opened the door of…the medbay, Lyzack noted with surprise. Deathsaurus bypassed the waiting room and strolled down the hallway, gesturing to a glassed-in recovery room. Lyzack took a look through the glass and immediately caught her breath. Something—some huge _animal_ —lay draped across a recovery table. 

It looked like Deathsaurus in his alt mode.

When asked what they turned into, Lyzack and Leozack could comfortably reply that they became aircraft. Not so, Deathsaurus. No Cybertronian language had a neat, simple word to describe the thing he became when he transformed. “Dragon” wasn’t quite right. Neither was “bird.” Deathsaurus’s solution was to tell inquisitive Decepticons that he transformed into _himself_. Lyzack had always suspected that Deathsaurus’s alt was based on the imagination—or the nightmares—of a designer at the MTO factory.

But now, Lyzack stared with fascination at the animal in the other room. Apparently she’d been mistaken. Apparently Deathsaurus’s alt had been based on a real animal, and here was an example of the species.

This creature was red where Deathsaurus was blue, and there were a few other differences as well. Lyzack noticed a more prominent crests, extra claws on the wing joints, and serrated barbs on the tail. It was also slightly larger than Deathsaurus. The creature seemed dopey, as though it had been sedated.

“It’s not exactly like you,” Lyzack mused. “Do we think it’s a different breed?”

“Actually,” Deathsaurus said, with an uncharacteristic stammer, “we, ah, we think it’s the female of the species.”

“We don’t have room for a giant pet,” Leozack grumbled.

“She’s _beautiful_ ,” Lyzack said. “Where did you get her?”

Deathsaurus shifted his weight. “The, ah, the planet we’re on?”

 _The planet they’d been sent to cyberform_. The native organic species had the capacity for advanced space travel. They’d fled, in their starships, and Deathsaurus had let them go. Deathsaurus often said that he wasn’t a Phase Sixer and extermination was not his role: he was sent to clear worlds for the cyberforming crew, and that was what he did, no less, no more. 

Lyzack nodded.

“The locals, ah…they set her to attack me, and then they left her behind.”

Bait. A distraction. Lyzack looked at the claw marks in Deathsaurus’s armour, the teeth marks on his throat, and guessed that it must have been one hell of a fight to subdue her.

“Which means,” Leozack added, “that when she wakes up, we’re going to have a problem.”

Deathsaurus’s optics flickered with warning. “Which is why I want Lyzack to talk to her.”

“ _Talk_ to her.” Leozack didn’t bother hiding his skepticism. “Lyzack doesn’t even have a Chest Animal. Why do you want my sister to be the monster tamer?”

“Well, _I_ can’t do it,” Deathsaurus snarled. “When she wakes up all she’ll remember is her organic masters siccing her on me, and me trying to stop her from ripping my throat out. And I’m not about to let _you_ talk to her either, in case she’s sentient enough to remember the stun charge you dropped on her and holds it against you.”

“Are you sure she’s going to know the difference between my sister and me?” Leozack asked, and Lyzack grudgingly admitted it was a good question.

“Of course she is,” Deathsaurus said.

Lyzack bit her lip. “Sir. How do you know?”

He shrugged. “You two smell different. You always have.”

Lyzack shook her head. All these thousands of years and she kept forgetting that Deathsaurus’s animal side influenced him in ways that her jet mode didn’t.

“Let’s hope that animal has a sense of smell as good as yours,” Leozack snapped, and then he stormed away down the corridor. 

Lyzack bit her lip. “He’s just worried about me.”

Deathsaurus sighed, and his wings drooped. “I know,” he said, watching Leozack go. “Listen, be careful in there. Don’t take any dangerous chances.”

“Because Leo will never forgive you if anything happens to me?”

“Because _I’ll_ never forgive me if anything happens to you,” Deathsaurus said. “Even if I’m not _actually_ your brother.”

Was she imagining that wistful note in his voice—a sad desire that he, too, might have someone who was kin to him? Did it matter that he’d been built on a different assembly line than she and Leozack? She didn’t know, and before she could think of a way to reassure him—to tell him that he was as much her brother in spirit as Leozack was in body—he’d raised his wings and put his Grim Warlord Face back on and the moment passed.

Lyzack turned her attention to the creature in the other room. “I’ll be careful,” she said.

#

Lyzack wasn’t sure where the ship’s doctor had gone—or the nurses, come to think of it. The only person in the medbay, supervising the new arrival, was Demus. Demus was an engineer and the best salvager on the Warworld, but Lyzack couldn’t stop herself from thinking of him as “the monoformer.” She tried not to visibly shiver at the sight of him. 

She also tried not to stare. Demus hadn’t always been a monoformer, and lately he’d been in the process of having his kibble removed. He looked, to her eyes, like a protoform—or a dead hulk, stripped down to its frame. He crouched over the sleeping creature as though he were the Necrobot—a fantastic avatar of death incarnate, come to appraise its latest victim.

Lyzack tried not to judge Demus for his eccentricities. Deathsaurus was one of the few people who’d be tolerant of a Cybertronian who no longer wanted to transform. She hoped her distaste for him was based on his personality rather than his decisions to modify his frame. And she really needed to stop thinking of him in such negative terms. Surely the crawling feeling that came over her in his presence was due to internalized prejudices, and it was high time she got over them.

“What do we know about her?” Lyzack asked.

“She’s _fascinating_ ,” Demus said, in the same tone Deathsaurus had used.

She lay stretched out on the recovery table, still. Leozack must have hit her with a pretty powerful stun charge. When Lyzack approached, the creature’s optics illuminated, and she tossed her head weakly, but though her limbs twitched, she appeared incapable of movement, even without the thick restraining bands that fastened her to the table.

And Lyzack saw, instantly, what had fascinated Demus so much. 

A badly welded surgical scar curled down the left side of the creature’s abdomen. Lyzack was no doctor, but she’d been pressed into the role of field medic early in her combat career, partly because she had a better grasp of circuitry than the average soldier. She knew enough anatomy to know what ought to be behind that scar.

A T-cog.

The back of her neck prickled as she activated the medbay’s computer and ran a search for the creature’s scans. Lyzack’s suspicions only became stronger as she looked at the images. There were internal mechanisms present that would only be useful if this animal transformed into a bipedal mode. Her organs, her inner works, were Cybertronian.

She wasn’t a pet. She was a _person_.

Horrified and amazed in equal measure, Lyzack turned back to the mechanism on the table, imagining how frightened she must be. “Hello?” Lyzack whispered in the creature’s—newcomer’s—audio. “Can you understand me? What’s your name?” 

The stranger blew air though the vents in her beak and licked at Lyzack’s face.

“You won’t get an answer,” Demus said smugly.

Lyzack scowled at him. Once again, that strange prickling sensation ran down her spinal strut and she remembered all over again that she didn’t like the salvage expert. There was something in his _voice_ that sounded unpleasantly greasy, like dirty oil. 

“Why not?” Lyzack answered coldly. “She doesn’t speak our language? We haven’t found a translation module to understand hers?”

“She’s not capable of speech,” Demus purred. 

Lyzack looked at the scans again. “She’s got a functional voxcoder. Does she speak hand?” Lyzack’s chirolinguistics were rusty, but she pressed her hand against the stranger’s talons anyway. The newcomer wove her digits into Lyzack’s.

“She’s not capable of signing, either. She’s a dumb animal.”

“But she’s Cybertronian. Like us.”

“Well, she _was_ ,” Demus retorted casually. “Her brain’s been tampered with.

Now she’s something _else_.” Lyzack really didn’t like the tone in his voice. It was as though he were expressing his admiration for what was, in fact, a horrific act of torture. “She’s less intelligent than the Chest Animals, now. I would say that those aliens used her as a weapon…after they, how shall we put it? _Domesticated_ her.”

The creature stirred on the table. Her optics flickered, slowly brightening. She focused her gaze on Demus, curled back her lip, and bared her teeth. Her wings fluttered, as though she were testing her control of her own body. Demus leaned over her, and she snarled at him, as though warning him not to get too close to her.

Lyzack hardly dared to breathe. Maybe she was projecting, but it looked to her as though the creature— _newcomer_ —was waiting for Demus to grow careless and put his hand within range of her jaws. He trailed a finger over the nape of her neck, and Lyzack shuddered in sympathy. Losing a digit or two would serve him right. 

But Demus had no intention of giving her a chance. He picked up an object that Lyzack recognized as a stun module. “Hush,” he purred in an oily voice that was anything but soothing. “We’re not done admiring you.”

Maybe it was coincidence. Maybe the stranger could hear Lyzack’s internal systems. Or maybe she was able to understand that Demus’s use of the word _we_ meant another person in the room. Whichever it was, the creature turned her head, and her gaze fell on Lyzack.

“I’m glad you’re here,” Demus said to Lyzack. “You can help me understand how they reprogrammed her.”

Lyzack barely heard him. Her gaze was fixed on the creature, who wasn’t snarling at her. 

The stranger simply watched her, as though trying to get Lyzack’s measure. 

Lyzack made up her mind with surprising speed. “No. Don’t stun her.”

“Excuse me?” Demus said, laughing. He continued to advance on the strange creature, stun module at the ready.

Lyzack reached out and gripped his arm, preventing him from moving forward. “I said _no_.”

Demus scowled. “I’d be careful about giving me orders,” he threatened. “You’re not your brother.”

She hated this. Primus, she hated this—having to rely on Leozack, and Deathsaurus, and the rest of her friends to protect her, to fight for her, to defend her. _Why_ couldn’t she have been built a soldier? 

“I outrank you,” Lyzack growled. 

“Who’s the one with the stun module?” Demus retorted. 

She never found out if Demus really would have dared to carry out his threat and try to stun her. She didn’t give him the chance. She broadcast a series of command codes and the door of the recovery room slammed open—just as the restraints on the table did the same. 

Demus’s optics grew wide with panic as the creature lurched to her feet. Wings flared for balance, she crouched on top of the table. “What have you done?” Demus demanded.

Lyzack was scared. Of course she was. But she put her back to the strange creature and folded her arms and glared at Demus. 

Demus stumbled backwards. “You’re _insane_ ,” he cursed. “I hope that thing _eats_ you.” Then his nerve failed. He spat out a foul epithet and sprinted for the open door. 

Lyzack wondered, for a moment, if the newcomer would obey her command if she told her to pursue and attack, but in the end she decided against it. She reached up her hand and rested it on the creature’s forehead, listening to the sound of Demus’s footsteps receding down the corridor. Her breath caught in her intakes.

The newcomer ducked her head and pressed her cheek into Lyzack’s hand. Lyzack stroked her neck and considered. She wasn’t Deathsaurus, and she wasn’t her brother, but maybe she could fix this situation simply by being herself. 

#

“It’s _repulsive_ ,” Deathsaurus said with a growl, as he sat in the medbay’s outer office reading Lyzack’s report on the newcomer. Lyzack understood the reason for his anger. The MTOs had been treated much the same as the manual classes of the previous generation: assigned a purpose and forced to act in accordance with that purpose, under pain of death for disobedience. Their own thoughts and desires were never taken into consideration as they gave their lives for their master’s cause. Lately Deathsaurus had been ranting about Megatron’s hypocrisy: how a miner who started a revolution to bring about freedom from Functionalism could justify creating new lives solely for the purpose of fighting his war.

“Demus seems…intrigued about the possible applications of this technique,” Lyzack said hesitantly.

“Absolutely _not_. It’s _slavery_ , pure and simple,” Deathsaurus snarled. “That poor mechanism. I don’t know what kind of life we can offer her, but it’s _got_ to be better than being reduced to some organics’s living weapon.”

“I…” Lyzack drew in a deep breath. “I think I can reverse the domestication process.”

Deathsaurus turned to her, his optics questioning.

“Those aliens…they captured a person who seems to be of Cybertronian origin, and they forcibly reprogrammed her. I think I can remove that code and bring her back.”

Deathsaurus frowned. “I don’t like you doing mnemosurgery. It’s not the same as computer programming.”

“It’s close enough,” Lyzack protested. “Deathsaurus, we can’t just _leave_ her like that. She’s not an animal. She’s a _person_. According to the data, she’s probably aware enough to realize that she’s in an unfamiliar place, surrounded by strangers, and she can’t _do_ anything about it other than lie there and feel scared.” Lyzack shuddered. “You know. How my brother and I felt when you found us.”

“She can attack,” Deathsaurus grumbled, rubbing at the teeth marks on his neck.

“If you were locked in a tiny prison, wouldn’t you?” Lyzack retorted, and Deathsaurus sighed. Lyzack folded her arms. “Either we keep her sedated around the clock, so that she doesn’t hurt us or herself, or you let me try to get her back to her old self.”

Deathsaurus sighed. “You’re going to explain this to Leozack. So if anything happens to you, he won’t blame me.”

Lyzack shifted guiltly. “I’m sorry, I didn’t think of that.” She should have. The last thing she needed was for _her_ to be the spark that set off the powderkeg between her factory brother and her adopted brother.

“Go do it now and come up with a plan to reverse the programming.”

Lyzack pulled air into her vents. “Er…”

Deathsaurus’s instincts were as sharp as ever. It was as though he could scent her unease. “Is there something further?”

“I-already-did-it,” Lyzack blurted.

His optics brightened in surprise and yes, probably anger. It wasn’t like her to be impulsive or disobedient. Leozack was the one who typically preferred begging forgiveness to asking permission. But she _couldn’t_ leave that poor Cybertronian a prisoner in the medbay any longer, particularly not with Demus creeping around. She’d focused herself and she’d gotten on with the task at hand. 

Deathsaurus reined in his fury. “Are you all right? Is she functional? Did it work?”

Lyzack took another deep breath. “I’m fine. As for her, you could read the report, or…”

A soft knock came from the other side of the recovery room door.

Lyzack’s nerves trembled, and she felt now as she’d often felt before battle: the fear that something would go terribly wrong, the terror that she’d watch her friends fall. But unlike battle, she also felt a confidence overlaying and harnessing her fear. She was _good_ at programming; she was _better_ at improvising.

Lyzack pressed the button that opened the door.

The stranger stood there, swaying slightly on her feet, flaring her wings to brace herself. She was tall, taller than Deathsaurus, and broader too—but it wasn’t uncommon for animal species to exhibit far more variation between the sexes than Cybertronians did. She still bore him an uncanny resemblance. In silhouette, Deathsaurus and the stranger could easily be mistaken for one another, just as Lyzack was with Leozack.

Deathsaurus’s optics widened—all four of them—and, much to Lyzack’s amusement, his jaw dropped open.

She’d had her whole life to get used to Leozack. She suspected it would take a while for Deathsaurus to get used to having another Cybertronian around who looked so much like him.

Since Deathsaurus was so obviously speechless, Lyzack introduced him. “This is my friend and commander, Deathsaurus,” she said, and waited to see how the stranger would respond. Lyzack thought she’d done a good job explaining to the newcomer where she was, how she’d ended up on the Warworld, and who the Decepticons were, but she wasn’t sure how much damage remained in the stranger’s processor.

The newcomer’s wings rose in surprise. “He…he looks like me,” she stammered, and for a moment the two of them gaped at one another, like mirror images, like shadow and light. Then the newcomer collected herself, and pressed her fist to her chest in a gesture of comradeship. “I am honoured to be here. My name is Esmeral.”


End file.
